Archive for August, 2007

Last night I was reading in Jeremiah 3, where the Lord gave me another glimpse into how He feels about our relationship with Him and how much He desires to bless and show us His goodness!

Jeremiah 3:11 Then the Lord said to me, “Even faithless Israel is less guilty than treacherous Judah!
Jeremiah 3:12 Therefore, go and say these words to Israel, `This is what the Lord says: O Israel, my faithless people, come home to me again, for I am merciful. I will not be angry with you forever.
Jeremiah 3:13 Only acknowledge your guilt. Admit that you rebelled against the Lord your God and committed adultery against him by worshiping idols under every green tree. Confess that you refused to follow me. I, the Lord, have spoken!’ ”
Jeremiah 3:14 “Return home, you wayward children,” says the Lord, “for I am your husband. I will bring you again to the land of Israel-one from here and two from there, from wherever you are scattered.
Jeremiah 3:15 And I will give you leaders after my own heart, who will guide you with knowledge and understanding.
Jeremiah 3:16 “And when your land is once more filled with people,” says the Lord, “you will no longer wish for `the good old days’ when you possessed the Ark of the Lord’s covenant. Those days will not be missed or even thought about, and there will be no need to rebuild the Ark.
Jeremiah 3:17 In that day Jeremiahusalem will be known as The Throne of the Lord. All nations will come there to honor the Lord. They will no longer stubbornly follow their own evil desires.
Jeremiah 3:18 In those days the people of Judah and Israel will return together from exile in the north. They will return to the land I gave their ancestors as an inheritance forever.
Jeremiah 3:19 “I thought to myself, `I would love to treat you as my own children!’ I wanted nothing more than to give you this beautiful land-the finest inheritance in the world. I looked forward to your calling me `Father,’ and I thought you would never turn away from me again.
Jeremiah 3:20 But you have betrayed me, you people of Israel! You have been like a faithless wife who leaves her husband,” says the Lord.
Jeremiah 3:21 Voices are heard high on the windswept mountains, the weeping and pleading of Israel’s people. For they have forgotten the Lord their God and wandered far from his ways.
Jeremiah 3:22 “My wayward children,” says the Lord, “come back to me, and I will heal your wayward hearts.”…

Often when a person finds it hard to believe something that God has shown them, I will ask them to simply imagine if it were true. This gets your faith-juices flowing, and makes way in your mind for true faith to begin to germinate. Meditate on what the Lord has shown you as if it were actually going to come to past! Then once you imagine God’s Word being true, you only have one more step… that is to actually accept it as truth. If God said that you will be blessed, then you need to accept that as a fact and stand upon it.

I have found that imagining something can be a very powerful step towards faith. The devil uses this same technique to tear us apart, when he gets us thinking about “what if… this or that”. That is HOW the devil plants seeds of fear… it is by first getting you to imagine or think about what it would be like if something bad happened. Once you start to think about those things, fear will begin to quickly grow in your mind. In the same way, we can begin to ask ourselves “what if… God showed me will come to past?”

The same is true with God’s Word. If your Bible tells you that your sins are forgiven (providing that you’ve confessed and repented of them and forgiven others), but you don’t feel like it… then simply start by imagining what it would be like if your sins were indeed forgiven as you were freely justified by the Blood of Christ! You will begin to feel really good about what Jesus has done for you, and faith will arise in your soul!